three steps forward, two steps backward
by donutsandcoffee
Summary: Alternatively, three things Luffy is good at and one thing he isn't. The Vinsmokes deal with Sanji. Luffy deals with betrayal. Nami deals with Luffy. Sanji… doesn't exactly deal. reposted to fix doc


**i.**

The moon is high in the sky when Nami startles herself awake.

She doesn't know what wakes her up—it could have been a nightmare, smoke-filled and blood-splattered, but she doesn't remember dreaming. She wakes up gasping a lungful of air anyways, throat and tongue sand-paper dry, so she slides out of her bed groggily and makes her way towards the kitchen to get herself a glass of water.

She doesn't flick the light switch on until she's halfway through her drink and almost drops her glass when she finds Luffy sitting at the dining table.

"You should've told me you were here," she chastises him, lightly, almost teasingly.

"Ah, sorry Nami," Luffy says, tone light, but Nami immediately knows something is off, the way he looks anywhere but at her, and. Well. Luffy doesn't make a habit of sitting alone in the Sunny's kitchen quietly. She doesn't think there are many things Luffy would do quietly.

The oddity of it all compels Nami to pull a chair beside him and slide closer, bumping their shoulders together. "Hey," she says, and waits.

She turns to him as comfortable silence settles between them, and she watches him close his eyes, take a deep breath, and clench his fists. She doesn't exactly place Luffy as a fidgeting worrier, and wonders what else she doesn't really know about him; wonders if there _are_ moments where Luffy would do things quietly, with Sanji, here in the kitchen. Comfortable in each other's spaces.

The moment passes. When he opens his eyes again they are sharp with determination, the kind of glint that makes her feel like she can move mountains and split the seas as long as he's there with her.

"Yosh," Luffy declares, suddenly. "We're going to get Sanji back."

He unclenches his fists, palms open, fingers spread on the table, and she lets out a breath she doesn't know she's been holding. "Of course, you dummy."

"Sanji already said he wanted to go back," Luffy continues. "We're just picking him up because he's being too slow."

"This is going to cost him at least a million berries," she jokes, except, well. Wouldn't want to pass up the idea of a million berries debt so quickly. "He better appreciate it."

Luffy's face splits into a smile at that, grin quicksilver and free, and she sees it again—that unyielding loyalty, the bare, _naked_ trust. Luffy has this way of looking at you like he's peeling off layers of carefully-set up pretenses and bravado, narrowing his field of vision until what's left of you is who you really are.

This is what Luffy is good at.

 **ii.**

When the smoke clears, Capone is lying flat on his back on a heap of rubble, rocks and debris rolling off of him from the impact of Luffy's punches. Luffy himself is standing not too far from Capone's body, bruised and battered but standing tall still, and Nami watches Chopper run past Capone to give Luffy a celebratory hug.

"You made it!" Chopper cries, face wet with tears and snot.

Luffy laughs heartily at that, patting the reindeer in the head, "I told you I'd beat him."

"You did! You're bleeding though—oh no! You're hurt, someone get a doctor—"

" _You're_ the doctor," Nami reminds him as she walks towards them, exasperated but fond, and she can't suppress the smile that tugs at her lips as Chopper starts fussing over Luffy.

She already walks past Capone when she hears someone says from behind her, "he's not coming back."

She stops in her track; feels her blood run cold.

She spins around, just as Capone groans, hands flopping uselessly on the ground. Still not a threat, thankfully, and when she's sure she can stand her ground just fine against this beat-up version of Capone, she asks, "who?"

For someone tethering so close to unconsciousness, Capone wears too smug of a smile. "Black Leg," he tells her with a smirk. "The Vinsmokes have their hands wrapped around him and there's no way he'll be leaving with you."

She raises her Clima Tact towards him. "We're bringing him back with us."

Capone barks out a laugh. "You don't seem to know _anything_ about Black Leg's family."

Nami steps forward, threateningly; a visceral, instinctive move.

 _You don't know what Luffy can do,_ she wants to tell Capone, screams the words until hoarse— _you don't know the way he reaches his hands towards you._ Nami wasn't always there when Luffy brought in a new crew member, but the stories are as familiar as the back of her hands, first things exchanged among the Strawhats in some weird kind of a rite of passage. _So,_ they would begin, _how did Luffy drag you into joining?_ Nami has heard of Sanji's initial hesitation, of Chopper's fervent refusal. Remembers Franky running around Water 7, naked as the day he was born and equally shameless, and of course, herself—leaving with a stolen ship and a bucketful of gold, only to return with a strawhat perched on her head and her dream in her hands.

But that was all— _before_. Before they found out Sanji isn't really _just_ Sanji, and the blood that runs through his veins is as thick as it is rare. She's suddenly suffocated with the reality of it all—what if Capone was right? What if the Vinsmokes keep a tight leash on Sanji, shackled so taut he can't come back? Or worse—what if Sanji doesn't _want_ to come back? Maybe they convinced him to change his mind, or the bride is too pretty and Sanji starts being _Sanji_ , or—

She shakes her head, as if trying to physically wrestle the doubts out of her mind. No. Capone is toying with her. She is not about to question _Sanji's_ loyalty, out of all people, who would follow Luffy to the ends of the earth and _more_ , red blood and fallen bodies in his trail. All of them would, faith-bound on their captain, and Sanji most of all, whose dream tethered on something so delicately fleeting it could have been nothing but a concept he believes too much in.

It is very much like— _Luffy's_ , she realizes, because that's how their dreams work, all or nothing. Either the One Piece exists, or it doesn't—either the All Blue does, or it doesn't. And Sanji probably sees himself in Luffy, the way he throws himself head first into the chase for his dream, and it all seems silly now to her that she even _considered_ the idea that Sanji would leave them. Would leave _Luffy_.

When she looks up, returning her attention back to Capone, Luffy is already crouching beside him.

" _You_ don't know anything about Sanji," Luffy fires, point blank. "He's part of my crew and he's coming back." He says it like a simple fact, like a universal truth, and it probably is, to Luffy, who reads people better than they know themselves, who took one look at the foul-mouthed chef on the floating restaurant and saw the small child trapped on a rock built from his own guilt inside. "You're too stupid to understand that though, so you should just shut up."

There's a loud _thwack_ as Luffy kicks Capone in the head, and Nami feels something lifted up from her chest.

Sanji will come back. Luffy will make sure of that.

This is what Luffy is good at.

 **iii.**

 _He isn't here_ , Nami reminds herself.

This isn't the first time she does that, and it frustrates her to no end, because she rationally _understands_ ; the leader of the Vinsmokes—Sanji's _father_ —isn't here, down in this underground room, surrounded by the remains of what once was his study. His voice _is_ here though, clear and crisp through the den-den mushi, and Nami feels the air around them go still, suffocating them.

The man speaks, and somewhere below their feet, deep under the ground, between the tectonic plates, the world trembles.

"It is in your best interest," the man repeats his earlier threat, voice deceptively calm, "that you would leave us alone."

Luffy grips the den-den mushi receiver tightly, and it cracks beneath his fingers. "Sanji is part of my crew and you can't take him away."

There's a pause from the other side of the line. "If you insist," the man finally says, after a moment, "then we would have to send one of our own. We simply do not have time to play pirates with your lot."

There's a wild, almost feral grin on Luffy's face. "Now we're talking."

The man scoffs. "You will regret this."

"Bring it on," Luffy growls, and the excitement finally gets to him—the receiver breaks and crumbles in his hands as the den-den mushi goes to sleep.

Nami and Chopper share a concerned look.

Between the three of them, considering Brook is still MIA, Luffy is probably the only one who can take on someone the Vinsmoke leader himself personally and confidently vouched, and Luffy isn't exactly at top condition after the fight with Capone.

There's a sound of footsteps echoing from the hallway leading up to the room, and Nami's grip on her Clima Tact instinctively tenses. There's worry, tugging persistently at the back of her mind, second-guessing her faith in Luffy; she mentally stomps on it with a shake of her head.

As if sensing her doubt, Luffy turns to her with a big grin on his face.

"Don't worry," he says, surely, steadily. "I'll kick their ass."

He _looks_ at her for a moment and then, satisfied with whatever he sees, turns back to face the room's entrance, cracking his fingers. Luffy is shorter than most, half of his own crew looms over him in height, but like this—blood under his nails, steel in his spine, intent on destruction—he seems to tower over everyone else in the room.

Nami looks at him, breathes in, and lets go.

This is what Luffy is good at.

 **iv.**

The figure comes closer, and Nami recognizes the sweep of his hair and the smell of his cigarette.

Nami thinks she can hear Luffy's heart fall, clattering and breaking somewhere around his feet.

 **v.**

Sanji and Luffy locked eyes, and before she could say something— _anything_ —the room exploded into motion.

Nami's voice freezes in her throat, choking her.

There's a flurry of movements, and it should be familiar—Nami has seen Sanji fight countless of times, with the marines, with bounty hunters, with _Luffy_ himself every time their captain made another attempt at sneaking into the kitchen before (and after, and during) dinner time. It should have been familiar but it's _not,_ because the way Sanji moves, too deadly and too precise, is not. The way Luffy falters, hesitant and tentative, fingers furling and unfurling like he keeps trying to ball it into a fist but _can't_ , is not.

The silvery glint of a knife edge, a shimmer-shine in between Sanji's fingers, is not.

Nami watches in horror as Sanji's knife blade grazes Luffy's skin, once, twice. There's an ease in which he holds it, born out of years of having various kitchen knives in his palm. Sometimes, she would watch him cook and think in passing that he would make a good knife fighter, if not a swordsman.

Or maybe she is thinking about it all backwards. Maybe he is good with knives _because_ he is a good knife fighter.

Luffy extends his arm and throws a punch—an uncharacteristically weak one. Sanji calmly ducks out of the line of shot and, from what seems like an impossible angle, does a spin with one hand supporting him on the floor.

The kick connects, the tip of Sanji's foot batting Luffy's hand away, and in that short window of opening Sanji _swings_ his knife and slices a long gash across Luffy's chest. It's thankfully narrow, barely bleeding, but as Luffy staggers back the implication of it all seems to glare at them: there was not a trace of hesitation in Sanji's move. It was precise, calculated—Sanji was intending to hurt.

Sanji was intending to _kill_.

Nami turns to Luffy to find him _shaking_ from head to toes.

"You said you were coming back!" Luffy shouts, _chokes out_ , syllables breaking around his voice in a rare sign of uncertainty.

"Sorry, Captain," Sanji says, calmly—a sharp, painful contrast to Luffy's wavering tone. He half-drawls the word _captain_ , mocking, and the sound is foreign in Nami's ears, almost surreal. Sanji shrugs, and says, "I lied."

There's a scream, she thinks, permanently lodged in Luffy's throat.

Nami remembers the city of a thousand rivers in Paradise; of Usopp turning back only to challenge Luffy into a fight, of Robin leaving with a lie almost too late to unswallow, and Luffy throwing punches like a lost child. They still left an invisible scar that Nami can sometimes feel on Luffy, raw and bleeding and fraying at the edges.

But Sanji was there, then. Held the crew together and followed Robin's trail when Luffy couldn't. _I'll do what you can't and you do what I can't._ Zoro tested Luffy, challenged him to pull his weight as the captain he expected Luffy to be, but Sanji recognized Luffy's shortcomings and took some of those weights off Luffy's shoulders whenever he could. Ever the one to make the sacrifice. A safety net, when everything else failed.

Now Sanji is on the other side of the divide, and it is as if something was yanked under their feet and they are stumbling, falling. Nami feels heady, breathless, and she can't imagine what it must feel like for Luffy, who sees betrayal like the press of a knife on a reopened scar. To look up and see _Sanji_ holding that knife.

Luffy is all sharp angles in his stance, the jut of his chin, the point of his elbow, the swoop of his ribcage, and he looks breakable, like colored glass.

" _SANJI_ ," Luffy screams, hoarse, _torn_.

This is what Luffy isn't good at.

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 **a/n:** it may be important to note that this was written _long_ before 843 was released; I just forgot to upload it here after uploading on ao3. [blows kisses towards japan] thank you oda for making my characterizations for this fic essentially canon

also, i'm not sure if it's clear enough in the text but the author intent is that sanji doesn't _actually_ betray the strawhats and he's just forced to fight luffy. this is in nami's pov though, who doesn't know any of that, so there's that


End file.
